As Kant said about the noumenal world (which is the same as the mind-independent world), nothing can be said about its objects except that they exist.
the Great Burgermeister — Janus
.....it seems this is the crux of the issue..... — Janus
if we say it is "something" that defies all categorization because it is "beyond" all our categories of judgement and modes of intuition then we would not be saying much, if anything. — Janus
As Kant said about the noumenal world (which is the same as the mind-independent world), nothing can be said about its objects except that they exist.
Is there any way at all, to reconcile the glaring contradiction in that statement? — Mww
In the absence of features of any kind, it is impossible to describe individual objects and characterize them. What can be done instead is to compare things with one another and define them in terms of each other. For example, a straight line looks a certain way to the human eye—a way that makes us recognize it as ‘straight’—and a heavy object makes itself known to our senses by being hard to lift. But the ideal of objectivity requires that we reject these interpretations of physical phenomena, because they rest on the idiosyncrasies of sensory impressions. Instead, we must treat the objects of study in a neutral fashion, based on the way they relate to one another. For instance, we perceive a straight line as the shape of a dangling plumb line. The path of an object in free fall is also a straight line, and so is a taut string. In order to be “neutral”, you take the notion of straight line to be an undefined concept, and record the fact that taut strings, plumb lines and the paths of objects in free fall are straight lines. If you aim for objectivity, you must then go one step further: When you speak of a straight line in science, you must suppress the image of the taut string in mind. You must force yourself to forgo any mental picture of what a straight line looks like, and instead, think of it as nothing but an empty word. When you use that word, you may hold the image of the taut string in mind, but that’s for your own benefit: It may guide your intuition but should not participate in your reasoning. In order to carry out such a program, it is essential that the basic notions (distance, mass, and so on) be treated as undefined concepts related to one another by formal relations. Within the confines of scientific reasoning, these entities must have no meaning. If you yield to the temptation to imagine them in mind with a concrete meaning (for example, to imagine a line as the shape of a taut string), you must be careful not to allow the meaning to slip into your reasoning and play a role in your conclusions. For suppose you slip, and continue to identify a straight line with a taut string. Suppose furthermore that you make use of your mental image in scientific reasoning, so the validity of your conclusion rests on the intuitive image. If that were permitted, then the laws of science would depend on the meanings we attach to concepts—on the mental images we hold in mind.
Certainty is clearly not a requirement for acting. — Metaphysician Undercover
there's a tricky point here, which is that the noumenal 'exists independently of human sense or perception'. But that is rather different from the idea of a thing that exists independently of human sense or perception, is it not? — Wayfarer
That got a chuckle outta me, I must say. And you know me.....everything philosophical worth repeating originated in Königsberg. — Mww
Which is precisely the exposition given by ↪Wayfarer
: “What the observer brings *is* the picture”. — Mww
Another problem of considerable interest to me is the fact that animal vision is invariably in the form of comprehensive, integrated perceptual groups or scenes — never of isolated single objects. In fact, when vision of extended displays fails, this is a token of severe pathology. This aspect of animal vision — the fact that multiple objects are perceived simultaneously — is profoundly mysterious, and has been almost entirely neglected in current research. — Charles Pinter (personal website)
There are intractable problems in all branches of science; for Neuroscience a major one is the mystery of subjective personal experience. This is one instance of the famous mind–body problem (Chalmers 1996) concerning the relation of our subjective experience (aka qualia) to neural function. Different visual features (color, size, shape, motion, etc.) are computed by largely distinct neural circuits, but we experience an integrated whole. This is closely related to the problem known as the illusion of a stable visual world.
We normally make about three saccades per second and detailed vision is possible only for about 1 degree at the fovea. ...There is now overwhelming biological and behavioral evidence that the brain contains no stable, high-resolution, full field representation of a visual scene, even though that is what we subjectively experience. The structure of the primate visual system has been mapped in detail and there is no area that could encode this detailed information. The subjective experience is thus inconsistent with the neural circuitry. Traditionally, the neural binding problem concerns instantaneous perception and does not consider integration over saccades. But in both cases the hard problem is explaining why we experience the world the way we do. As is well known, current science has nothing to say about subjective (phenomenal) experience and this discrepancy between science and experience is also called the “explanatory gap” and “the hard problem”. There is continuing effort to elucidate the neural correlates of conscious experience; these often invoke some version of temporal synchrony as discussed above.
There is a plausible functional story for the stable world illusion. First of all, we do have a (top-down) sense of the space around us that we cannot currently see, based on memory and other sense data—primarily hearing, touch, and smell. Also, since we are heavily visual, it is adaptive to use vision as broadly as possible. Our illusion of a full field, high resolution image depends on peripheral vision—to see this, just block part of your peripheral field with one hand. Immediately, you lose the illusion that you are seeing the blocked sector. When we also consider change blindness, a simple and plausible story emerges. Our visual system (somehow) relies on the fact that the periphery is very sensitive to change. As long as no change is detected it is safe to assume that nothing is significantly altered in the parts of the visual field not currently attended.
But this functional story tells nothing about the neural mechanisms that support this magic. What we do know is that there is no place in the brain where there could be a direct neural encoding of the illusory detailed scene. That is, enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience. So, this version of the neural binding problem really is a scientific mystery at this time. — Jerome S. Feldman, The Neural Binding Problem
He means you have to be certain of something, because when you TRY to doubt EVERYTHING then you can't doubt anything — Gregory
But who will doubt that he lives, remembers, understands, wills, thinks, knows, and judges? For even if he doubts, he lives. If he doubts where his doubs come from, he remembers. If he doubts, he understands that he doubts. If he doubts, he wants to be certain. If he doubts, he thinks. If he doubts, he knows that he does not know. If he doubts, he judges that he ougth not rashly to give assent. So whoever acquires a doubt from any source ought not to doubt any of these things whose non-existence would mean that he could not entertain doubt about anything. — Augustine, On the Trinity 10.10.14 quoted in Richard Sorabji Self, 2006, p.219
Cogito ergo sum. — René Descartes
If he doubts, he knows that he does not know. — Augustine, On the Trinity 10.10.14 quoted in Richard Sorabji Self, 2006, p.219
So whoever acquires a doubt from any source ought not to doubt any of these things whose non-existence would mean that he could not entertain doubt about anything. — Augustine, On the Trinity 10.10.14 quoted in Richard Sorabji Self, 2006, p.219
, because doubting, it is claimed, presupposes certainty. — Metaphysician Undercover
he does mention Hegel by name in the chapter. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.